“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus


1927 – Tales of gangsters abound throughout Illinois history. The stories of Al Capone, Bugs Moran, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre grabbed most of the headlines, but the Shelton-Birger feud was a doozy.
The criminal overlords battled each other with handmade armored cars and weapons that often outnumbered local law enforcement’s firepower. But on this date, they took it a step further and made history at the same time.
The Sheltons hired a pilot to fly over Shady Rest and drop three homemade bombs on the Birger boys – the first aerial bombing in American history. Two bombs failed to explode and the third missed. Retaliatory bombings followed, though no one was killed.
Charlie Birger made history of a different type in 1928 when he was hanged for his role in the murder of the Joe Adams, the mayor of nearby West City. Birger became the last man to be hanged in the state of Illinois.


1927 – Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.


1931 – The crosswalk down the street would become famous thirty-eight years later, but no tourists were in sight the day Abbey Road Studios (then known as EMI Studios) opened in London.
Sir Edward Elgar conducted the first historic recording of Pomp And Circumstance March No. 1.


1938 – Nazi Germany issued the Decree on the Elimination of Jews from Economic Life prohibiting Jews from selling goods and services or working in a trade, totally segregating Jews from the German economy.


1938 – The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces began. The battle lasted for three days and ended with an American victory.
The Japanese lost a total of 24,000 men killed in the Battle of Guadalcanal, while the Americans sustained 1,600 killed, 4,200 wounded, and several thousand dead from malaria and other tropical diseases.


1948 – In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentenced seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.


1954 – Ellis Island closed after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.
Annie Moore turned 15 years old the day she was admitted at Ellis Island with her two brothers, on January 1s, 1892. Coming all the way from Ireland, she was also the first person to ever pass through the immigration station


1955 – In the annual Billboard DJ poll in U.S., the most played single of 1955 was Pledging My Love by Johnny Ace. The most promising R&B act was Chuck Berry and the most popular R&B act was Fats Domino. Elvis Presley was voted most promising country and western artist.


1981 – Actor William Holden bled to death in his apartment in Santa Monica, after lacerating his forehead from slipping on a rug while intoxicated and hitting a bedside table. He was 63.
In addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17, Holden starred in some of Hollywood’s most popular and critically acclaimed films, including Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, Picnic, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch and Network.


1990 – Actress Eve Arden died of cardiac arrest at the age of 82.
Although she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Mildred Pierce, she is perhaps best known for her role in television’s Our Miss Brooks and the film musicals Grease and Grease 2.


2001 – In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashed minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.
The location of the accident (the aircraft crashed into the neighborhood of Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens), and the fact that it took place two months and one day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in nearby Manhattan, initially spawned fears of another terrorist attack.
However, the National Transportation Safety Board attributed the disaster to the first officer’s overuse of rudder controls in response to wake turbulence from a preceding Japan Airlines Boeing 747-400 that took off minutes before it.


2004 – A jury convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay. Peterson was later sentenced to death, but in 2020, the California Supreme Court overturned the death penalty.
The court upheld Peterson’s conviction, but it said that the trial judge had made mistakes that hindered his right to an impartial jury during sentencing. In 2021, Peterson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.


2008 – Drummer Mitch Mitchell, best known for his work in the Jimi Hendrix Experience (for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992), died of natural causes at the age of 62.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2023 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies. All Rights Reserved.